Flesh And Blood

Eight minutes passed, ten, twelve. Why was he taking so long? Should I return to the car and call for help? What would I tell the dispatcher?

As I thought about it, the kitchen door opened and Milo beckoned me in. Sweat stains had leaked through the armpits of his jacket. His face was white.

“What’s going on?” I said.

Instead of answering he showed me his back and led me through the kitchen. Blue granite counters were bare but for a carton of orange juice. We hurried through a floral-papered breakfast nook, a butler’s pantry, the dining room, past all that art, and Milo ran past the elevator into the living room, where Melville Abbot’s trophies were gloomed by blackout drapes.

He vaulted up the stairs, and I followed.

When I was halfway up, I heard the whimpering.

Abbot sat propped in bed, cushioned by a blue velvet bed husband, hairless skull reflecting light from an overhead chandelier, slack lips shellacked with drool.

The room was huge, stale, someone’s vision of Versailles. Gold plush carpeting, mustard-and-crimson tapestry curtains tied back elaborately and topped by fringed valances, French Provincial replica furniture arranged haphazardly.

The bed was king-sized and seemed to swallow Abbot. The bed husband had slipped low against a massive swirl of rococo headboard of tufted yellow silk. Lots of satin pillows on the bed, several more on the carpet. The chandelier was Murano glass, a snarl of yellow tendrils crowned by multicolored glass birds. A small Picasso hung askew above the crest of the headboard, next to a dark landscape that could’ve been a Corot. A folded wheelchair filled one corner.

The straggling white puffs of Melville Abbot’s hair had been battened down by sweat. The old man’s eyes were vacant and frightened, lashes encrusted with greenish scum. He wore maroon silk pajamas with white piping and LAPD-issue handcuffs around his wrists.

To his left, a few feet from the bed, red-brown splotches Rorschached the gold carpet. The largest stain spread from under Jane Abbot’s body.

She lay on her left side, left arm stretched forward, legs drawn upward, ash hair loose and fa

Her eyes were half open, filmed, the lids swollen and blueing. Her mouth gaped, and her tongue was a gray garden slug curling inward. One ruby-crusted hole blemished her left cheek; a second punctuated the hairline of her left temple.

Milo pointed to the floor next to the nightstand. A gun, not unlike his 9 mm, near the draperies. He drew the clip from his trouser pocket, put it back.

“When I got here, he was holding it.”

Abbot gave no indication of hearing. Or comprehension. Saliva trickled down his chin, and he mumbled.

“What are you saying, sir?” said Milo, drawing closer to the bed.

Abbot’s eyes rolled back, reappeared, focused on nothing.

Milo turned to me. “I walk in and he points the damn thing at me. I almost shot him, but when he saw me he let go of it. I kept trying to find out what happened, but all he does is babble. From the looks of her, she’s been dead several hours. I’m not pushing him without a lawyer present. It’s Van Nuys’s case. I called them. We should have company soon enough.”

Mel Abbot groaned.

“Just hold on, sir.”

The old man’s arms shot out. He shook his wrists, and the cuffs jangled. “Hurts.”

“They’re as loose as they can be, sir.”

The chocolate eyes turned black. “I’m Mr. Abbot. Who the hell are you?”

“Detective Sturgis.”

Abbot stared at him. “Sherlock Bones?”

“Something like that, sir.”

“Constabulary,” said Abbot. “State trooper stops a man on the highway – have you heard this one?”

“Probably,” said Milo.

“Aw,” said Abbot. “You’re no fun.”

CHAPTER 23

MILO SCANNED THE bedroom as we waited. I could see nothing but tragedy, but his trained eye located a bullet hole on the wall facing the bed, just to the right of the wheelchair. He drew a chalk outline around the puncture.

Mel Abbot continued to hunch stuporously in the bed, cuffed hands inert. Milo wiped his chin a couple of times. Each time Abbot yanked his face away, like a baby repelling spinach.

Finally, the howl of sirens. Three black-and-whites on Code Two, a Mutt-and-Jeff detective duo from Van Nuys Division named Ruiz and Gallardo, a squadron of cheerful, bantering paramedics for Mel Abbot.

I stood on the landing and watched the EMTs set up their mobile stretcher. Milo and the detectives had moved out of the bedroom, out of the old man’s earshot, talking technical. Sidelong glances at the old man. A moist slick of snot mustached Abbot’s upper lip. Jane’s corpse was within his line of vision, but he made no attempt to look at her. A paramedic came out and asked the detectives where to take him. All three cops agreed on the inevitable, the prison ward at County General. The short D, Ruiz, muttered, “Love that drive to East L.A.”

“No place like home, ese,” said Gallardo. He and his partner were in their thirties, solidly built, with thick black hair, perfectly edged and combed straight back. He was around six-two, Ruiz, no more than five-eight. But for the height differential they could have been twins, and I began thinking of them as outgrowths of some Mendelian experiment: short detectives, long detectives… Anything to take my mind off what had happened.

It didn’t work – my head wouldn’t shake off images of Jane Abbot’s final moments. Had she known what was coming, or had the flash of the gun been sensation without comprehension?

Mother and daughter, gone.

A family, gone.

Not a happy family, but one that had cared enough, years ago, to seek help…

A restraint strap unbuckled with a snap, and the EMTs advanced on Abbot. He began to cry but offered no resistance as they eased him onto the stretcher. Then he gazed down at the body and screamed, and waxy arms began striking out. One paramedic said, “Now, come on,” in a bored voice. Snap snap. The paramedics went about their work, speedy as a pit crew, and Abbot was immobilized.

I ran downstairs, retraced the path through the house and out the kitchen door to the flagstone pathway. The sun was relenting, and the lowest quadrant of the sky was striped persimmon. A few neighbors had come out to stare, and when they saw me they edged closer to the gates. A uniform held them back. Someone pointed, and I ducked out of view, stayed close to the house, which was where Milo found me.

“Taking the air?”

“Breathing seemed a good idea,” I said.

“You missed the fun. Abbot managed to slip an arm out and grab hold of one of the EMTs’ hair. They shot him up with tranquilizer.”

“Poor guy.”

“Pathetic but dangerous.”

“You really think he did it?”

“You don’t?” He slapped his hands on his hips. “I’m not saying it was premeditated, but hell, yeah. He was holding the gun, and that hole in the wall fits with a shot fired from the bed. My best guess is it happened last night. They probably had the gun in a nightstand, somehow he found it, was using it as a teddy bear, Jane entered the bedroom, freaked him out, and boom.”

“Suburban security goes bad.”

“We see it all the time, Alex. Usually with kids. Which is what Abbot really is, right? The nightstand drawer’s within arm’s reach. There’s another gun in there – older revolver, a thirty-eight, unloaded. So maybe Jane was being careful. But not careful enough. She forgot about the clip in the gun.”